Coming home

 
Being human is the strangest thing. I’m not sure I’ll ever really get used to it. Some people seem to be born anchored into their bodies. They feel at home in them. Other people, like me, always have this sense of one foot in, one foot out. While I am having a physical experience in this sweet body of mine, a part of me is still very much in the ethereal. Somewhere between the magic of dusk and the black of night where the things lie that we cannot see, and I find life to be quite strange.
 
The way my mind and mood alters when my body isn’t well. The way that tears come without any explanation. The way I feel anger or sadness but can’t attach it to a reason. Until I journal and I write about the feelings and then from somewhere words come together under my pen and bring with them both relief and wisdom.
 
I wonder about other people, how they seem so sure about what they feel and why. How the world seems to make so much sense to them and everything is either wrong or right. I sometimes envy their lucidity on what life is and what we are doing here.
 
For me life feels like a myopic blur: I can see the way the walls breathe and how everything is not really real. I see energy instead of solid objects, wavering between solid entity and vibration. I see how people feel from the vibes that emanate from their skin. I listen to their words, but, more closely I listen to the things they don’t say, in between.
 
We moved into our own house a little over a month ago. The last time I lived in a place of my own was in a little studio apartment in Paddington, Sydney in 2011. That’s 6 years ago. The time before that was a room in Hackney, London in 2005. And the time before that was in Trinity Beach, Cairns while I was at university in 2002. In between I was always just passing through somewhere. Renting a room short-term or sleeping on a friend’s spare bed or sofa. I never stayed anywhere long enough to commit to a home of my own.
 
Waking up here every morning brings with it a soothing reassurance that I can relax now. I am finding my little rituals: half a lemon squeezed into warm water and sitting with it on the steps of our porch; yoga or exercise on my yoga mat next to the only piece of furniture, a giant paisley armchair, in the corner living room; picking the raspberries as they ripen; making smoothies packed with more goodness that my body can probably absorb.
 
Here, I can breathe. I am left alone with my sensitivities to the physical world. I don’t have to put up boundaries to the enormous waves of information and energy in the outside world. Here, I can be still.
 
We are slowly working on filling the house with unique pieces of furniture. Pieces that mean things to us. It takes time, and it’s ok, time is something we have. I desperately want houseplants and Julien gently indulges my whims. I scour the local online classifieds and find a listing: houseplants all $4, with dark and grainy pictures underneath.  Julien calls and reports: it’s an old man in a hair salon in an alley downtown… he says we can come by tomorrow.
 
In the morning we go to the salon. The door says open and I pull on it. The smell of Ammonium wafts out as I step in and see a little old man deftly working tiny curlers into the hair of a little old woman sitting in a chair. I’m here to see your plants! I smile. I’m just setting a perm,  as he points at a few sitting on the counter… I see some that I love straight away. There are more downstairs… He takes me down a set of stairs and turns the lights on pointing to some sitting on a window sill and more on a bench.
 
Julien follows me down and as we look around we feel like we have fallen into a secret wonderland of antiques and old things for sale. Julien finds an ancient lock and chain that he wants to put on the gate that opens to the alley from our secret garden for $1. I scoop up a couple of plants I like and then head back upstairs to collect the others I’ve already had my eye on. Big juicy elephant ears, and heart-shaped vines, and palm fronds growing out of a pink trunk. I’m in plant-love.
 
The old man tells us that he grows the plants at home and then brings them in to sell. He shows me how to grow more of the plants from cuttings and gives me his business card. I ask him if I can call him to ask questions and he smiles. Julien doesn’t want to leave and asks the man where he gets all his treasures from. With a twinkle he leans over and tells us he has many clients that are dead or dying, and they give him all their old things when they go. We leave feeling that we have stumbled into a magical place of enchantment. I make Julien promise me we will go back every month and search for treasures.
 

 
The next day Julien goes back to work. He works shifts at the jail, 4 days on, 4 days off. It annoys me because I hardly get my work done when he’s around. It means that I work weekends now, when he is working them. I haven’t found my rhythm and complain to him about it.
 
My day is filled with catching up on emails. I email the women I’ve had 1-on-1 calls with during the week and draw up their unique mind-maps for what the next steps are. I love this part as much as I love being on the call with them. So much intuitive wisdom that isn’t mine flows through from under my finger tips as I type. Sometimes those emails become novels, there’s so much left to be said. Sometimes they are short notes reminding them that they already have exactly what they need, that all that’s left is to look within and trust.
 
My friend Claire and I open enrolments for our first ever joint project The Heartful Biz. It’s the most casual and relaxed release of a new creation that I’ve ever had. It feels good not to have to push or force or frogmarch it onto people. We both know that the right folks will be called to participate. We want to revolutionize the way that we do business. All heart, no hustle. After all, that’s what we teach, too.
 
At night an old familiar feeling haunts me. I feel like I am covered in invisible shackles and I desperately want to run away. It scares me. I haven’t felt that feeling for a long time now. I had secretly hoped that it would go away. My mind starts racing and I question everything: this house, my relationship, being in Canada. Julien reaches out to snuggle with me but I tell him I feel like a prickly pear and don’t want to be touched right now. I feel bad. I don’t want to push him away. I really do love him. But when I feel like this I can’t be touched by anyone. I do the one thing that every spiritual teacher has ever taught me: I sit with the feelings and allow them to wash over me. Every time my mind tries to lure me into an escape plan I come back to feeling my body, the prickly, uncomfortable sensation of being here, of being alive, of being human.
 
Sleep starts to take over. It is comfortable and safe. The next morning my impulse to run to somewhere far away is gone. I go back to wondering why being human is such a strange thing.